


Life support

by caricari



Series: Life [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Comfort Sex, Established Relationship, M/M, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Stressed Crowley (Good Omens), Two bros chilling in a bath less than five feet apart because, communication porn, lockdown - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:33:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caricari/pseuds/caricari
Summary: Crowley gets home after a long day. Some stress and then some comfort.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698442
Comments: 44
Kudos: 195





	Life support

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all. 
> 
> Heads up, the beginning of this is a bit heavy. Multiple mentions of current pandemic stuff and a bit of hospital stuff. So, WARNING, if you’re not looking for that rn. The end is significantly sweeter and hotter, to make up for it. 
> 
> I wrote this and its precursor, ‘New Life’, based on the book timeline. So, if Adam was 11 in 1990, he would be forty in 2020. This is a sequel, but if you really don’t want to read 'New Life' then all you really need to know is that A/C are together, Adam trained to be a doctor when he grew up, and Crowley has been looking out for the young antichrist. :). 
> 
> Anyway. Stay home. Stay safe. Enjoy your smut.

.

The coffee shop is closed. Usually at half six in the morning, it is filled with people. A haven for workers, grabbing stimulants at the beginning or end of a shift. For families, waiting for visiting hours to begin. For nervous patients, clutching letters and staring fretfully at the clock. 

Today, however, the shutters are down and the lights to the backrooms are off. There is nobody moving behind the serving hatch. Nobody seated around the tables. The chairs are stacked on top of them, neatly - turned upside down, like the rest of the world. 

The demon and the antichrist sit on a bench, opposite the closed sign. 

The bench was Crowley’s choice of meeting point. He’s always liked a bench. It is a liminal space - somewhere on the way to somewhere else. He likes the impermanent permanence of it. The feeling of taking a moment away from the weight of the past, away from the ever-present draw of the future. There are positive associations, too. Benches have always been a meeting place, for him and the angel. There are countless memories associated with benches, in Crowley’s world. 

Turning his head, the demon looks at the antichrist. 

Adam looks too tired to be thinking of liminal spaces, or abstract concepts. He looks too tired for anything other than his bed, in all honesty. He’s just coming off his third night shift of the week. Crowley, his fourth. Neither of them particularly need to sleep, but both are accustomed to the practice. And unaccustomed to the environment they find themselves in. 

It’s like riding a bike, the antichrist had told Crowley, when he’d called up and asked him to join him at the hospital, a few weeks back. You taught me everything I know. Can’t have forgotten it all in just a few years. Come back and lend a hand. Do it as a favour, for me. 

And of course Crowley had agreed. It was a favour, after all. And he hasn’t forgotten how to ride this particular bike. He’d dabbled in the healing arts throughout the ages. (Science had always offended the church far more than any competing religion). He’s been a physician for longer than humans have even used that word. And he’s never had a moral problem with it. There is nothing inherently good or evil about saving a life, after all. It is just a perpetuation of something - an expanding of opportunity, a spread of knowledge. And isn’t that what Crowley had been put on earth for, in the beginning?

Aziraphale would argue that point, the demon thinks. Aziraphale would argue there was something intrinsically good, in what he is doing here - working alongside Adam in these halls of mortality - but their views of the world have always contradicted. It’s part of why Crowley has not told the angel where he’s been going, these past few weeks. He doesn’t want to deal with the fall out of that particular conversation. He doesn’t want to shoulder the angel’s praise. 

Crowley has a bit of a thing about praise. From Aziraphale, he finds it validating, thrilling, illicit. He craves it like air. Yet, there’s another side to it that makes him feel uneasy. He’s afraid of raising the angel’s expectations too much - of doing something good, by accident, that he can never replicate on purpose. He’s afraid of spending the rest of eternity disappointing the angel. He was not made to be good, after all.

Good and bad don’t matter in the hospital, the demon thinks, leaning back against the bench. There is only life and death, here, and the great spectrum of physicality between. The only contrast is between breath and lack of breath, between heartbeat and lack of heartbeat. The laws of flesh, and blood, and bone. 

Hospitals are great, neutral grayscale places - places which have nothing to do with the choices of immortal souls. They are places where someone who is considered a traitor in both heaven and hell can feel almost at home. 

“I keep thinking that I’d better get going,” Adam says, at Crowley’s shoulder, “or I’ll hit rush hour. Stupid thought, really.”

The demon turns his head, eyeing the man, who was once the boy, who was almost the antichrist - a man who is now his charge. 

They are family… sort-of. The kind of family that you end up with, rather than any kind defined by blood. Adam is coming up for forty, now - though he looks no more than thirty. There are aspects of good and evil, and immortality, that he is only just beginning to grasp, Crowley thinks. 

The demon intends to be there, to help the almost-antichrist deal with it all, as it comes. He intends to be there afterwards, too, to help Adam find a place in this world - outside the role that Hell had imagined for him. The demon is not sure about a lot of things, in life, but he knows how family is supposed to work. 

You be there. End of. 

“Suppose the roads are pretty empty, these days,” he mutters, towards Adam.

He doesn’t know, for sure. He doesn’t drive to the hospital, himself. He just walks a little bit from the bookshop and manifests himself, across the distance. Not driving separates this experience from the rest of his Earthly life. It allows him to draw a nice, neat line around the horror he is witnessing, and keep it away from the world he shares with Aziraphale. 

“Why don’t you just pop over?” He asks his young companion. He knows the almost-antichrist can use his powers to do so, same as he and the angel can. Crowley had taught him, himself, nearly twenty years ago. “It would save you the bother of having to stay awake, all the way home. S’a bit of a drag.” 

“Dunno.” Adam gives a shrug. “Suppose I’m still trying to fool myself into thinking I’m in the same boat as they are.” 

“Yeah.” Crowley looks forwards again, thinking of the humans, upstairs. He can understand that.

The antichrist sighs, running a hand through his decidedly not-greying hair. 

All of his human friends are greying, now, Crowley thinks, remembering their last mutual gathering, at Christmas. Brian and Pepper, and Wensley - all adding weight to their frames and wrinkles to their skin. The demon wonders whether Adam envies or pities them. He suspects it is probably a mixture of both. That is how it has always been, for him. 

“How was today?” He asks. 

He hasn’t seen his charge - his sort-of son, his family - since two days ago. They’ve been working on different wards, at opposite ends of the hospital. He has been able to feel him, though. They can always feel one another, when they’re nearby; all the celestial and occult creatures of Earth. There is distant aura that surrounds creatures like them. 

Crowley has always found Adam’s rather comforting. A mixture of hellish and human. Something familiar. 

“Fucking awful,” Adam mutters, at the floor. “We’re running out of swabs. And masks. How’s upstairs?” 

“As expected. Everyone is being marvellously calm.”

“Yeah. Helps that yours are sedated.”

“Mmm. I meant the staff.”

“I know. Bad joke.”

There is a gap in conversation. A moment where the demon fiddles with the top of the plastic water bottle he’s carrying. He’s taken to drinking water, these past few weeks. The masks make his mouth and throat feel dry in a way that a miracle cannot eradicate. 

The whole getup is awful, actually. His head hurts from the bands of the visor. His skin feels clammy and itchy, under his scrubs and the layers of polyethylene. The gloves leave sweat rashes on his wrists. He is dying to go home. To wash this place from his physical form. To be renewed, somehow, by the flow of water. 

“I spoke to Aziraphale the other day,” Adam tells him, the warmth at the angel’s name only just shining through his exhaustion. “He said he was helping coordinate local relief efforts. Making sure everyone was getting food and medical supplies.”

“Yeah. He likes ordering people around, by phone. Think it appeals to his inner dictator…” 

The corners of Adam’s mouth twitch. 

“Is he doing okay?”

“Think so.” The demon gives a shrug. It still feels odd, being considered an authority on how Aziraphale might be feeling. It still feels dangerous, to hear someone refer to them as a ‘them’, out in the open - even obliquely, thirty years in. “He’s struggling with the lack of fine dining opportunities but he’ll manage.”

“Delivery still happening in your area?” 

“Yeah, but most of his favourites are shut, now.” The demon stretches out his legs, uncrossing the ankles as he cricks his neck. “I get major points when I bring home ingredients, to try a new recipe, and there's a tangible reward system for sourcing quality cake...”

Adam shoots him a half glance that tells Crowley he’s amused but doesn’t wish to hear more on the matter. 

“Not being able to do more is wearing on him,” the demon admits, after a little pause. “But any more would draw attention. Heaven has never allowed much lee-way, when it comes to natural disasters.” 

Crowley focusses the long pupils of his eyes, behind their dark tinted glasses, on the little closed sign of the cafe, across the way. 

He can remember the natural disasters of the past - too numerous to name. He can remember the way the angel would find him, in the aftermath of something terrible, and just loiter for a while. It was comfort seeking. Crowley had known that, even then, in that time of relative distance between them. Aziraphale had always hated standing back and letting nature take its course. He had hated holding back the miracles when humans were suffering. 

He had sought out Crowley because the demon had been the only creature who understood. Bound to the Earth and in love with its strange, imperfect beauty - bound existential power, but unable to lift a finger. They had sought one another for comfort often, after that first time. The flood. 

They had learned to compensate for their lack of being able to use their powers, too. The demon in the physical. The angel, in matters of the soul. Aziraphale fixes communities where Crowley fixes bones. It’s fitting, the demon thinks. Complimentary.

Beside him, Adam has gone very quiet. 

This is the almost-antichrist’s first natural disaster, the demon thinks - the realisation hitting properly, for the first time. This is his first plague. The events of the near-armageddon had been disturbing, yes, but it had been a very existential problem. One that he had been able to use his powers, to fix. This was different. This was an Earthly problem, with no easy existential solution. 

“It’s hard to see them coming through it,” Adam says, eventually, at his shoulder. "Things going back to normal."

Crowley dips his head. 

“It always is.” 

It always has been. 

For a moment, the demon remembers the bodies of men lying over one another in the streets, in the plague of Athens; the stench of decay still clinging to his brain, from four hundred years before the birth of the christian prophet. He remembers the sound of bells in the streets, ringing for the people to bring out their dead, in the thirteen-hundreds. He remembers the black death and the sweating sickness that recurred, every hundred years. 

He remembers cholera and typhus. Haemorrhagic fevers that bled the humans out, from the inside. He remembers fifteen percent of the world lost, to Spanish flu. And the influenza that tore through Hong Kong, years later, in the fifties. He remembers smallpox waxing and waning, through the ages, stealing the world’s children. He remembers thirty six million dead, from a single virus, born in the Congo.

This is the way humanity will be wiped from the globe, Crowley thinks, staring at the hospital wall. This is what will take them, one day. Not the bombs, or the guns, or nuclear warheads falling from the sky. It will be another kind of life, evolved alongside them - something invisible and lethal, in the air, or the water, or the blood. Another type of life, to snuff out that which pridefully calls itself supreme. 

This is the way the world ends, the demon thinks - his thoughts, a hollow refrain of some human’s words, written a lifetime ago. Not with a bang, but with something much softer. The end is inevitable. In one day, or a thousand days, or a thousand, million years. Their impermanence is the reason they continue to fight and grow. Their mortality is what gives their world meaning. 

Crowley believes their end is far, far in the future, however. Despite his best efforts, he is an optimist. He believes that humanity will make it - spread out among the stars, colonise the galaxy and beyond - grow and build, and write a legacy which will last for millions of years. He believes they will be the authors of great beauty (and also great suffering). He believes that they will be great. But even great things must end. 

It is part of what makes this dimension so beautiful, he thinks, eyes sliding down the hallway and arresting on two humans, two nurses, talking in hushed voices gathered around a clipboard. They are fleeting things.Like the Earth, and the universe, and all matter - like light, and life, and stars. They are beautiful things. Temporary things.

“It always feels like the end, when you’re in the middle of it,” he tells Adam, remembering the plagues of lifetimes ago - of civilisations, and empires, and worlds ago - remembering the sound of grief that remains the same. “But it never is. There’s always more life, on the other side.”

“They always survive.”

“Mm.” 

’ _They_ ’ is new, Crowley thinks. Adam has only just bridged from referring to humanity as ‘ _they_ ’, rather than ‘ _we_ ’. 

The demon eyes the almost-antichrist, feeling slightly uneasy. While it is important that Adam learns to balance distance and attachment, it is still vital that he appreciate the ‘we’ of the situation. As existential creatures, they are bound by different rules than humanity, but they are a part of this world. They made that choice. Thirty years ago. 

"We rebuild,” he tells his young friend. “We move on.”

“How are people meant to move on, after so much death? How do they cope with it?” 

“We make new life.” Or find solace, in the shadow of the action.

The pair of occult creatures watch one another, for a long moment, both thinking about family, and belonging, and all that nonsense; about how grateful they both are, not to be alone. Then, Crowley realises that he has to move on, or risk feeling distinctly too many emotions for any demon to be feeling, this early on a Tuesday morning. 

“Listen,” he reaches out and cuffs the almost-antichrist roughly, around the head - in a manner Adam has always accepted to be affectionate. “Just… go home, alright? Check in with your friends. If they’re wanting for anything, you pick it up and bring it over. Take advantage of not needing an immune system... Then, you give whoever you’re shagging a call, have a shower, and get some rest. Don’t think about it all until you have to, again.” He stands up. Yawns. Stretches. “Rinse and repeat, until this all blows over. It will, eventually, you know? Things will change, but stay the same. They always do.”

Adam gives a non committal grunt. 

“You’ll be fine,” the demon fixes him with a less sympathetic stare. There is one part of parenting that requires softness, and another part which requires a firmness that one could never fully apply to themselves. A sort of well-meaning hypocrisy, Crowley thinks, shoving his bottle of water into his back pocket. “You heading off?”

“In a bit. Need to drop a file downstairs, first. Then I’m done. Might walk for a bit, before heading home. Need to clear my head.”

“Sounds good.”

“Mmn.”

They watch one another. Adam looking a bit sorry for himself. 

“You should come over for dinner, on Thursday,” Crowley mutters, spur of the moment. “I mean, don’t drive down, and get us all in trouble with the police, but… make an appearance, won’t you? Pop by around seven, bring some wine. The angel would like to see you. And it’ll take the weight of conversation off my shoulders, for the evening.”

The antichrist’s mouth curves into something like a smile. 

“Yeah, all right.”

“Ngk.” 

The demon turns, rolling his eyes at himself. Gone are the days he can pretend to be disconnected with this world. He has an angel, he thinks - a partner and a home, in a scruffy little bookshop - and an almost-child who will mope if he’s not included often enough. He has a part-time job, in the dirtiest, most disgusting fluid-filled sphere of humanity. He has responsibilities, in the great big neutral sphere of living - and a couple of projects going, in the much more narrow field of demonic mischief. (Because he _is_ a demon, after all. And nobody else is going to switch the collection times on postboxes, if he doesn’t). 

“Right. I’m off home for a shower.” And, hopefully, a fuck, Crowley adds, inside his head. He’s has not needed a bit of contact so badly in a long time. He just hopes Aziraphale is around and amenable. Not that he’s above tweaking the circumstances... He’ll quote poetry if he has to. These are desperate times. 

Adam rises and bids him goodbye with a one-armed hug. 

“Right. See you Thursday, then.”

“Yeah. Might just have scrubbed my eyeballs clean of this place, by then…”

“Bye, mum.” 

“Later, spawn.”

They part ways near the front doors. The demon peeling off into the sunshine beyond, the Antichrist turning back down the corridor that leads to records. 

. 

Crowley finds the angel fiddling with a tea cozy in the kitchen, worrying over a frayed stitch in the hem. The demon has done his usual travel thing - arriving by magic some streets away and walking the short distance to the bookshop. There is no sudden influx of magic that should have alerted Aziraphale to his presence. Still, the angel’s head pops up as he appears in the doorframe, eyes lighting as they find Crowley slouched against the lintel. 

“Oh!” He turns, beaming. 

There have been times in history that Crowley would have razed countries and civilisations for that smile. That smear of pink and white. Perfect row of teeth. Slight overbite. 

Beautiful angel. 

“You’re home early. You’ve been out till nine, every other day this week!"

Of course he’s tracking when Crowley gets home, the demon thinks. Aziraphale gives the impression of bumbling around the place - losing chunks of the day to the binding of some new book, or the pages of some old one - but he's almost always paying attention. Aziraphale likes to keep an eye on things. He is a guardian, after all. A gatekeeper. Crowley’s beautiful, careful, slightly bumbling angel. 

The demon folds his arms across his chest.

“Yup, finished early.”

Aziraphale sets the tea cozy down by the side of the stove he'd ‘bought’ when he'd decided to try and use less magic - to draw less attention. It’s an old fashioned model, probably something he’d seen in the seventies, and covered in stacks of pattered tea towels. There are a couple of cookery books to compete the image, stacked on a narrow shelf off to the right, alongside a collection of mugs that Aziraphale has picked up at markets, over the years. All of it feels comfortable because it’s imbued with the angel's magic. His love.

Years ago, Crowley would have considered stealing one of those tea towels. Might have taken it home and slithered into his snakeform - curled up beneath it, to nap. The love poured into the fabric would have simulated real connection. But he doesn’t have to do that any more, he reminds himself. There is no need for a pale imitation. He has the whole angel, now, he thinks. Hard as it is, sometimes, to accept that they are connected in such a way. 

“Tea?” Aziraphale smiles, pink over white. 

He doesn’t ask Crowley where he's been. 

_Fuck me, first?_ Crowley thinks, then gathers himself. Yes, he wants that. But he wants a bit of normalcy, first. 

“Yeah," he nods, instead. 

“Sugar?” The water is boiled, the angel dropping tea bags into cups and pouring. 

“Yeah, go on."

_Then, fuck me?_

Satan, it’s difficult living in his mind, sometimes… 

He really does want the normalcy. He wants the comfort of a normal, inane conversation - the angel pottering around the kitchen, making tea, being his friend - he wants it almost as much as he wants tangible evidence that they are more than that. 

He wants Aziraphale’s mouth on his, because they’ve stood this close to one another half a million times, throughout history, and he needs for this time to mean more than those times. He needs confirmation that he has his friend - both as his friend but also as his partner. He wants to know that he's coming home to comfort. He wants the angel sighing with need, against him, because he wants to have made at least one person’s day better. It’s been a long few nights and, for all the sweating in masks and gloves and aprons, he feels like he’s not accomplished very much. 

“One or two?” Aziraphale asks him, of sugar. 

"Two." That's an admission of need, in itself, Crowley thinks. He usually takes his tea over brewed and unsweetened. But he needs something softer, this morning. 

“Of course. Long night?” Those sea coloured eyes seek him out, curious in an undemanding sort of way. 

Aziraphale, Crowley thinks, staring at the side of the angel’s cheek. He’s got Aziraphale, checking in that he’s okay. _Aziraphale,_ the most important person in his world. His friend and, also, more than his friend - and isn’t that such a strange, human concept?

They’re only really just getting around to that bit, the demon thinks. Thirty years in, they’re only just admitting to that the bits of their relationship that are the most telling. The things that they want from one another when they are alone and completely honest. 

Deep, hungry kisses. Sweet, slow touches. Physical representations of a love that spans dimensions. It’s all a bit strange, and a bit human, but it's weirdly perfect, too. It’s very them. 

“Yeah, long night..." The demon looks around himself, at the sun soaked kitchen, rays of light catching floating pinpricks of dust. “Gosh, it is morning, isn't it?” he murmurs, a little dazed by it all "Forgot to do the whole 'good morning' bit..." 

Aziraphale throws him a little look over his shoulder. A little smile. 

“Good morning, Crowley.” 

"Morning, angel…"

They stand watching one another for another second. Then, Crowley crosses the distance between them. 

It happens in a precise sequence of movements. His arms unfold and his legs start moving, his brain telling his feet how to land so that they carry him to the place he’s aiming - but Crowley doesn’t really register any of this. He’s just in the doorway, one moment, and then up against Aziraphale, the next. His arms wrapped around the angel, face pressed into the back of his neck, mouth pressed against warm skin. 

How he got there isn't important. All that matters is the contact; the reassuring solidity of his friend’s shoulders; the feel of the much-loved fabric of his waistcoat; the scent of the angel, caught in the curls at the nape of his neck. 

“S’been a long few nights,” the demon mutters. 

Strong fingers slide back, squeezing his hip. 

“Yes, I expect it has.” Then, Aziraphale is turning gently inside his embrace, so that their eyes can meet - so that they can press together that way around. Sharp demon hips against the ample swell of angel belly. "Are you okay, my dear?” The angel asks.

“Yeah…” 

How can they be this close? It blows Crowley’s mind every time they vanish the distance between them. Physical proximity feels both arbitrary and ridiculously important. How can they suffer being so close, opposites that they are? How can they bear to have any distance between them, now that they know different? 

And they know one another so well, now. They’ve shared these bodies in every conceivable way. The demon knows every inch of Aziraphale - inside and out. 

“I love you.” 

The words spill out from him. There is no intention behind them. The cake he brought home, in its small white box, has intention. The way he’d stepped into the room, using just a little too much hip, had intention. But not this. 

“I think it makes me happier, each time I hear you say that,” Aziraphale smiles up at him, mitigating how stupid Crowley feels, about the admission, in an instant. 

Clever, beautiful angel. He always knows what to do, to make the vulnerable bits easier. He knows Crowley inside out too, after all. That's why he keeps talking - because he knows Crowley never really has anything to say, in the aftermath of those words. 

“I only just got back, too, you know?" He informs the demon, lightly. "I’ve been out since four, organising packages and making sure they all get to the right people. I realised it was probably easier, to deliver everything early on, before there were other people using the roads.” He looks so pleased with himself that Crowley doesn’t point out that the entire delivery sector had figured this out, yonks ago. “I think we’ve managed to get prescriptions out, to everyone who needs them,” the angel muses. “There are a few elderly humans, living on upper floors, that will need checking on, over the next few days, but we’ve got people who are volunteering. Lovely people. Oh - and that charming girl from the red cross dropped by, just half an hour ago, to pick up details of those needing food deliveries. They’re going to take them all on. Isn’t that nice?”

“Mmh.” This is nice, Crowley thinks. He lets his eyes wander over Aziraphale’s forehead, tracing the imperfections in his skin. 

This is exactly where he needs to be. In the quiet of their sunlit kitchen, with the angel chatting away, at him. The occasional sound of a car winding past, outside, and a bath running in the next room. He can hear the radio that sits on the floor, beside the bath, playing softly - some song from the early eighties that Crowley might have danced to once. The familiarity is palpable, soothing, wonderful. 

“I was just going to have some tea and wash up,” Aziraphale continues, “then perhaps catch up on some reading, before the rest of my calls, this afternoon. I feel a bit guilty for neglecting the new books, you know? I’d just got four more on medieval architecture in, before all this kicked off, and I’ve barely had a chance to look at them. I know they’ll keep, but it seems a shame to have them collecting dust in the back room, doesn't it? I think I’ll just have a quick look at them, after tea. Just a peep, you know… to check. Oh-,” his face brightens again. “Could you help me locate some biscuits, from the top shelf? You have a few extra inches on me.”

“I don't.”

“You're quite a bit taller,” the angel clarifies, half admonitory, half amused.

Crowley does a little eyebrow flick.

There is a pause between them - comfortable enough for the demon to slide his hands up, behind his friend’s neck, winding tips of fingers into his hair. 

“I brought you chocolate cake,” he tells the angel, pushing just a little intent into the words. “Much better than biscuits. Has layers, and chocolate filing, and cream, and everything.”

“Oh, did you?” The angel gives a little wriggle, which Crowley suspects is forty percent involuntary, sixty percent put on for his benefit. “That’s lovely. Thank you, Crowley…”

“It’s a bribery gift,” he admits. “To make me look good.”

“Well, I suppose you’ve had a great deal of success with cake bribery, in the past," aziraphale tugs at the back of his shirt, straightening it. 

“I have.”

“A tried and tested method.”

“It is.”

“Is it the one that comes with cherries?”

“Nah, it’s a demon’s food cake.”

“I think it’s devil’s food cake, dear-,”

“It’s a demon’s food cake,” Crowley repeats, eyes tracing the soft edges of cheekbones, down into the crease formed by Aziraphale’s smile. 

“Well,” the angel relents. “We can share it, if you like? With tea?” 

“Mmh.” He’s watching that smile. There is a little divot in the pink of Aziraphale’s top lip that he’s always loved. It traps his eyes, sometimes, when they’re on their way to some other part of the angel’s face. They’ve been staring at one another’s mouths for the past few hundred years, Crowley thinks. Useless idiots that they are…

“Come to think of it, I may have some of those berries left from the other day,” Aziraphale is looking around the countertops, absently. “They might go rather nicely with chocolate cake.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yes… those little strawberries, we had, from the place down the road…” he turns back to Crowley. “It is so good that they’ve been delivering things, isn’t it? I was worried that all of these places would go under, what with current conditions, but they’re really rather inventive, humans.”

“They're occasionally all right.” 

“And their response to disease has improved a great deal, really, now the they know to wash their hands.” The angel presses his thumbs into each side of Crowley’s waist, looking oddly nostalgic. “And separate their drinking water from the sewage system.” 

“Mm.”

“Are you heading out again, tonight?” 

Crowley shakes his head, still watching that soft, pink mouth. 

“Nah.”

“Well,” Aziraphale beams. “You could help me with the calls, then, if you like? Once you’re rested, of course. I’ve done the morning lot, but there will be more, later on.”

“Sure.” 

A pause.

That pink smile slips a little wider. 

“You’re not listening, are you?”

“I am.” Crowley blinks, then gives in to the need growing at the base of his spine. He tilts his head forwards, nudging just close enough for their lips to brush. “A bit… sort of…” He doesn’t need to listen. He just needs the soft skin of his friend’s lips on his. “What was it?” He asks, throwing a quick glance back up, in concession to whatever it was that Aziraphale had been saying.

“Oh, nothing important,” the angel is watching him, expression indulgent. “Human things. But I can handle them, if you’re tired from being out all night."

“I was out all night…”

“Doing demon things.”

“Yeah... demon things…” Crowley swallows. It feels vulnerable and exposing, voicing this, but it’s been a fucking long night and he needs something more. “Angel? Can we-?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale answers, definitively. 

Crowley eyes him. 

“Sex?” It’s good to be direct. He learned that early on.

“Yes.”

“Oh. Good.” 

He must sound relieved, because Aziraphale gives a little chuckle as he closes the distance between them, stroking a thumb down the rise of the demon’s cheek. 

They kiss, the movement well-worn and comfortingly familiar. Backing gently up against the oven, their lips meet gently, at first, then soon with more intent. Crowley’s hands find the angel’s sides and they stumble sideways, crowding into the corner of the worktop, small noises of need escaping as their mouths meet - over and over and over again. 

The repetition is mind numbingly soothing. Crowley is lost to it. At first, it’s something like a release valve, the pent up unease of the last twelve hours draining out of him. Then, it’s a growing warmth, in his belly and between his legs. His skin feels slightly prickly, but in a good way. In the best way. He pushes harder, into the angel, kissing hungrily. 

“Mmh… breathe, darling.”

“Fuck breathing. Can we go next door? Nothing against the decor, but the last time we did this, in here, I ended up with the imprint of a cupboard handle on my ass.”

“Yes,” a tiny laugh. “Of course. Come on.” 

They pull themselves off the counter and wander out, towards the hall, mouths still meeting sporadically - the movements faltering their progress. Eventually, they make it through the doorway and along to the bathroom door, where the angel stops them with a squeeze of Crowley’s hand. 

“Stop the bath running, will you? I’ll go hang my coat up.” 

Letting go of the demon’s fingers, he pads on, towards their bedroom. Crowley watches him go, for a moment, before slipping into the small tiled bathroom and moving over to switch off the tap. 

Water drips from the nose of it for a moment, once the water is shut off. Fluid dynamics, he thinks, gazing down at the ripples the droplets make on the surface of the bathwater. Was that one of his? He thinks it was. Long time ago, though. Could have been Micheal. Or Lucifer. 

They hadn’t had bodies, then, Crowley muses. He couldn’t possibly have anticipated how much relief someone could get, from peeling layers of clothing back and feeling the steamy bathroom air rush over bare skin. He couldn’t have imagined how sensation would overwhelm his thoughts - how blood rushing through the veins inside of him, pooling in his cock, would flood him with emotion. But it does. And it’s wonderful. It reduces the world to just the little sphere of existence around him and Aziraphale. A few rooms. Some sunlight, streaming in, through the windows. 

Abstractly, Crowley knows that what his body is doing is just a function of human design. A work-around, he thinks, to allow internal fertilisation and gestation. Abstractly, it’s a hugely complicated deal, involving nerves and blood vessels, and millions of years of evolution. It’s a clever feedback loop - a stimulus that gets him up, which triggers a hormonal, emotional reaction, which keeps him up. Abstractly, it’s biology and chemistry and fluid dynamics, again. 

In reality, though, he's just hard. And it doesn’t matter, whether or not a demon should feel emotionally drawn to this state of being, because he does. He’s all wrapped up in the human aspects of having a body, and of sharing it, with Aziraphale. These bodies are part of them, six thousand years in. So, it matters. 

Taking a slow breath, Crowley clicks his fingers, cleaning all traces of the night from his skin - all the sweat and alcohol gel, and hospital. He’ll wash later, properly. He never feels completely clean until he’s done it the human way. But, for now, it is enough that he _is_ clean. 

Raking fingertips through his hair, the demon eyes himself in the bathroom mirror, checks again that he remembered to turn off the tap, then wanders back through, towards the bedroom, trying not to think about the fact that he’s naked and Aziraphale is going to be clothed. 

There are different ways of being naked, he’s learned, over the past six thousand years. There is being naked during washing, which is necessary. There is being naked at home, wandering through the flat, which is just a return to the natural - to the state humans used to exist in, before clothes became more obligatory and ritualised. Then, there is this; him, naked in the doorway to the bedroom, in presentation. An offering for an angel who sits fully clothed, his eyes alive with interest, at the foot of the bed. This is a more vulnerable kind of naked. A kind for pairs. For mates. 

Crowley eyes his friend. His mate. 

They have sex in different ways, just like they are naked in different ways. This version of them is Crowley’s most extreme version of comfort seeking. Like the two sugars in his tea. 

He feels powerless. He wants to submit until he feels powerful. Aziraphale can help with that. 

“Shall I undress?” Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley shakes his head, paces forwards until he’s standing just on front of the angel. 

“No. You’re fine as you are.”

“Okay.”

Aziraphale never asks why he wants something a certain way. There is zero judgement, here. It’s one of the things that had surprised the demon, in the beginning. He had expected a proper break-down and analysis of what they both liked and what it all meant - Aziraphale had always been one for analysis - but it had never been like that, when it came to sex. 

He remembers a moment after one of their first encounters, lying spread out beside the angel, his cheek resting on Aziraphale’s forearm.

_‘Is it weird, that I like that?’ He’d asked - steeling himself for all the possible answers. But the angel had just smiled._

_‘No more so than me liking oysters, or chocolate cake…” His fingertips had traced along Crowley’s sweat-dampened spine. Slowly. Lovingly. ‘We like what we like. It doesn’t have to be more complicated that that. We define our wants, dear. They don’t have to define us.’_

Crowley tries to think about it that way, now. He’s slowly letting go of all the pretences, all the worries about what he should and shouldn’t like - what a demon should and shouldn’t be. He’s six thousand years into life on Earth, after all. If he was going to change, he would have done so, by now. He is what he is. Fallen angel and rubbish demon, but more than that, too. 

He’s not so terrible, at being a friend. And he's actually pretty good, at being Adam’s family. And he likes to think that he makes at least a halfway decent partner - though he’s never actually been bold enough to ask Aziraphale. Maybe he will, one day… 

He leans down, resting palms on top of the angel’s thighs, leaning in until their faces are an inch apart. 

“Can I ravish you for a bit, then?”

Aziraphale clears his throat and adjusts himself, in that way he does when he’s trying not to look too pleased with himself. A tightening of the corners of his lips - a smile, forced to flatten - the movement at odds with the way his eyes flash ‘pleasure'. 

It both exasperates Crowley and fills him with a soft, squishy feeling. Because it still blows his mind that Aziraphale finds him desirable - that the angel feels lucky to be wanted by him. That somehow, despite having put up with his nonsense for sixty centuries, Aziraphale still thinks that he’s about three thousand times cooler than he actually is. It makes Crowley feel all puffed up and powerful, in turn. 

They are, he thinks, in no uncertain terms, a pair of idiots. 

“You may,” Aziraphale lifts his chin, a little primly. “Just, do be careful with the tie and-,”

“Yes, yes, I know…” The suit is relatively new, bought ten years ago, now, but the tie and waistcoat are the same ones that he’s been wearing for the past century. Things he has clung to, out of sentimentality. They are important to the angel. So, they are important to the demon, too. “I’ll be careful,” Crowley forces the harshness out of his voice, butts his face into the crook of Aziraphale's neck. “When am I not careful, with you…? Hm?”

The sentiment is rewarded with a little sigh of appreciation, and the angel lets his head fall to one side, lets him kiss along the line of his neck as Crowley’s fingers work the aged fabric free from around his collar.

There is a routine to undressing him that Crowley likes. It’s comfortable and draws out the tension. The tie comes first, then the top buttons of his shirt. Then, he works his way down the waistcoat, dropping down so that, by the time he reaches Aziraphale's belt, he’s kneeling between the angel's legs, naked on the floor. There’s a power dynamic to it. Something appealing in the way he can submit himself in the task. 

He lets his friend shrug himself out of his shirt and his vest, but does the trousers himself, placing kisses along the outside of his thighs as he goes. The golden hair that’s dusted there is one of his favourite things, about Aziraphale’s body - that soft, pale hair. The angel would probably laugh, to hear that - just like Crowley had laughed to learn that Aziraphale’s favourite thing, about seeing him on his knees, was the neat little way his feet folded over one another. (Not the power dynamic, not having a demon kneeling before him, offering to suck him off - just Crowley’s incongruously delicate, high-arched feet). 

They are, without a doubt, the worst demon and angel to ever be posted to Earth. Lost in the joys of their physical world, driven to distraction by the pleasures of their physical bodies, lacing their metaphysical connection - which, by all rights, they should never have been able to forge in the first place - with this very human way to love. It’s ridiculous, Crowley thinks. They’re ridiculous. 

_They’re brilliant._

Aziraphale’s toes curl against the hardwood floor as he sits, completely naked, looking down at Crowley. 

“Well, are you going to start down there, then, and work your way back up?” He says it all coy, his voice slightly breathless, and Crowley has to fight back a grin. 

_This. Absolutely. More of this, forever._

He fights back the urge to say ‘you’re ridiculous’, as he crawls up over the angel, pushing him down on the bed - because that’s not really what he means. That’s never what he’s meant by ‘you’re ridiculous’, or ‘you’re such a twat’, or ‘I honestly don’t know why I put up with you’. Because Aziraphale is often ridiculous, and sometimes a bit of a twat, and often Crowley has no idea why he puts up with him - but there is always a caveat to it - the bit he never adds out loud. 

You’re ridiculous and I love you. 

Not but - it’s not a condition - _and_. 

“Lie back.” 

He starts at the very tips of him. The angel’s big toe, first - tracing a thumb under the crease of it, then pressing firmly into the pad. Dipping his head in, he presses a kiss under the hard bone of Aziraphale’s ankle, next. Then, into the shadow of the tendon, at his heel. Then, he follows the swell of his calf up to his knee, then his thigh. He draws out every movement, brushing lips against skin, teasing flesh with open mouthed kisses. 

There are other times when they do this fast, times when they do this desperate, but this particular permutation is slow. So slow that it makes the angel shiver. 

And that's how it works, for Crowley. It doesn’t matter if he’s had a shit day when his nose is pressed against the underside of the angel’s hip. It doesn’t matter if everything else has been a failure, with his tongue tracing the crease of Aziraphale’s thigh, and his hands sliding north to rake across pale, soft skin. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, elsewhere in the world. He’s only got one task, here, and it consumes him. It fills his mind - shrinking the sphere of his reality right down to one room, to a few square metres, to the way his lover’s spine bends, hips tilting against the mattress. 

Aziraphale will squirm, if he does this right. And that’s the point. That’s how this works. If he makes the angel feel good enough, then Crowley can feel in control again. If he can do this right, then he can move back onto the rest of it. Gather himself. Stop panicking. 

The world is complex and he hates feeling out of control, but this is safe. This, he can do. This, he’s good at. 

“Tell me what you want,” he murmurs up, at the angel. Because Aziraphale always needs a bit of a nudge, to get started, (though he does wonderfully, once he's going). “What next?”

“Umm…” Aziraphale's head is tilted back. Crowley can only see the underside of his chin, the rise of his cheek, the little peak of his pink top lip. And eyelashes. 

There’s a hollow under his neck that bobs as he swallows. The demon likes that. 

Fuck, he loves that they have bodies to do this. They share space in other existential spheres, sometimes - and he loves that, too - but this way holds a special place, for Crowley. This is what they do because they are of this Earth. And Earth has always been their place. Every other occult and ethereal creature has come and gone, but he and Aziraphale remain. They were the two in the garden. They were the two at the almost-end. This is their world.

“Along the sides of me,” the angel murmurs, characteristically shy. He has trouble using ‘my’ for the first little bit, Crowley thinks, digging nails into his hips. “Oh-!”

“Like this…?”

He’ll worship him any way. But he wants it to be perfect. 

“Yes…” 

He’s breathless. And this is why Crowley doesn’t believe in karma - because nothing he could ever have done, in this or any life, could make him deserving of this sort of power. 

He kisses along the sides of the angel, soft and hard, with the occasional graze of teeth. Aziraphale lets out encouraging sighs, letting his fingers fall to the back of Crowley’s neck, stroking him gently. 

“Where, now?” The demon asks, once he’s flushed the skin up to his ribs pink, with pleasure.

“Belly, and then higher. Over my… chest.”

As if he can’t say ‘nipples’, when they’re naked up against one another, his cock leaking all over the side of Crowley’s thigh. He’s ridiculous…

“Here?” The demon sucks higher, following the line of his ribs, brushing fingertips, then lips, then tongue. 

“Yes…”

“Here?”

“Oh - that! There, please… just there!” 

As if he didn’t know, Crowley thinks, with a smirk. As if he needed instruction on how to suck at his angel - how to fork his tongue over that flushed pink flesh and make him arch, in pleasure. 

He had never known why he’d been given this particular demon mark - why he can turn it off and on, unlike his eyes - but this use for his snakelike tongue had been a delightful discovery, early on in this part of their relationship. A far better use than any Hellish task. 

Aziraphale and his nipples…

Feeling royally pleased with himself, the demon works his way around one, and then over to the other, keeping the movements languid and slow. Then, when the angel feels as if he’s about to writhe out of his own skin, he stops. Lifts his mouth to Aziraphale's collarbones. Kisses them as he scratches sharp fingernails along the curve of his ribs. 

“Next?” 

He knows what next. He’s already worked his way up, after all. Now, he goes down. But he has to be told. That’s part of the deal. 

“My belly again. Then along my hips, please. You do that so well.” 

Crowley smiles. 

He _does_ do that well. He’s fucking great at that. And he’s really, really fucking hard at the thought of being great at it. (God, what a complete, useless idiot… Why is Aziraphale into this? How is this turning him on? Thank Someone that it is…) 

“Like this?”

He does the belly again, pressing his face into the swell of Aziraphale, into that little crease over the navel, into the softness of his waist. Then, it is hard kisses, down around his hips, towards his cock, which is flushed dark pink and lying up against him. He has darker hair around the root of it, just a few shades off the blonde of his chest. He lets a little sigh out, as Crowley drags fingertips through it.

“You like that, angel…” The demon’s words are almost to himself. He’s lost in the moment, in being allowed this. Fingers sliding up along the flushed, pink length of his lover. Fingers down, into the hair at the root. 

Up again. Down again. Barely touching. 

Another little sigh. A half-swallowed moan. 

“You like that a lot.”

Reaching out with a single fingertip, he sweeps it over the head of him, collecting the clear liquid beading there. 

Aziraphale slides a leg further out. 

“Oh-,”

“Fuck, angel, you’re dribbling over the place." He slides the finger back down the length of him, leaving a wet stripe across the skin. “You’re-,”

“Crowley, darling, shut up and use your mouth.”

Arousal shoots through him, lighting like fire beneath his skin. 

Fuck _. Okay._

“…how?” he's contrary by nature, though. Can’t help it.

Aziraphale lets out a little breathless sigh.

“Suck me.” 

“Suck you?”

“Yes. Now.”

Leaning in, Crowley takes him in his mouth. He swallows the length of him right down, making the angel let out a low whine. 

What he had joked about earlier is true, the demon thinks, as he feels the dizzying stretch of hot flesh against the sides of his throat. Aziraphale has an inch or so on him. A bit of girth, too. It’s hardly a matter of pride, when they can change their bodies at will, but it’s so typical of the angel - to have not stinted on his Earthly body. He’s never been much good at denying himself, in this world. 

He’s not denying himself now, Crowley thinks. He’s arching up, beneath the demon, fingers wrapping into his hair, pulling him down. And he’s squirming as Crowley scoops some of the fluid that’s pooled around the root of him up, and slides one finger back, between his cheeks. Over him. Around the rim him. Dipping into him slowly. Slowly. 

“Mmh-,” 

Aziraphale's eyes have dropped shut. He’s panting. So is Crowley, in the moments where his mouth is free. He presses that finger slightly forwards and lets the angel push back. Aziraphale likes this - likes his tongue, and his fingers, and his body, pushed deep inside of him - though that’s not where this scene is going to end, today. Crowley can tell. It’s just something in his lover’s body language, in the half-aborted thrusts of his hips. 

No, this is going to end inside him, and the demon is okay with that. Kind of planned for that. Has kind of been fantasising about it since he left the hospital. Aziraphale is going to give him exactly what he needs. Crowley will suck a bit longer - curling his tongue _oh so_ cleverly, bringing his lover’s sighs closer to helpless, feeling the tension in his muscles twitch and stutter - and then-,

“Come here,” there’s a hand in his hair, suddenly, coaxing him up. Then, a hand at his hip, guiding him over, into his lap. 

Crowley complies, eagerly. 

His legs fit snug around the angel’s sides. Just long enough to give them room to touch. They fit as if they’re made for this, he thinks, vaguely, as two hands slide around the back of him, fingers spreading him open. They feel as if they were built to fit around each other. 

He's a little overwrought, by this point, and that thought doesn't help. It twitches in his abdomen, sends a shooting rush of need up his spine. He's panting away, as Aziraphale touches, unable to catch his breath. There is saliva and angel smeared all over his chin. It should be disgusting, he thinks, how much these bodies can leak. How slick, and wet, they get. But it’s not. It’s good… it’s so good… 

And the miracle Aziraphale draws down, to make everything slicker and wetter is even better. And Crowley’s presses his palms into the angel’s chest for support as his friend - his lover, his partner, his mate - slips fingertips over him, then into him, coaxing space from his body. 

And how could they ever go back to being purely existential beings, Crowley thinks, dazedly. He could never let go of the joy of this - of sliding themselves together, of the rush of stimulation and hormones and emotion. It’s all mixed up and dizzying, but it’s perfect. Aziraphale, pushing up into him is perfect. The pressure and pull of him is perfect. The rhythm that carries them through the next few, countless blurring minutes, is perfect. They’re perfect. He’s perfect. Crowley’s ridiculous, perfect, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful angel. 

“Oh-,” 

Aziraphale grabs hold of his ankle when he comes, the tightness of his grip more than enough to send the demon spilling over the edge. 

“Nng-ah! Ah…” mouth open, hands free, making some vague imitation of human words. “Shit, shit-shit-shit-shit, ah-! Fuck, ah!” 

Ten seconds pass with only ringing in his ears. 

Glorious, glorious emptiness. 

Then, his heart rate beings to slow, adrenaline still tingling in his fingertips.

“Hah…”

His lover's breaths are slowing underneath him, the sound familiar and deep. 

"Fuck..."

“You okay?”

“Nnh'yeh... Yeah…” The angel shifts, beneath him, sliding hands up to rub his sides, gently, the movement a little supportive, as well. The demon has sunk back against his bent knees, boneless, legs shaking slightly. “Ugh…” 

Aziraphale chuckles, beneath him. They have a bit of a recurring joke, about how loud Crowley is, in bed, and this is only going to serve as more ammunition, the demon thinks, but that is fine. It really is. It’s been a long few days, and he needed this. And it’s only Aziraphale, he reminds himself. He can trust Aziraphale to know he’s a useless prat. It’s hardly new information, is it?

“Come here…” 

Technically, the bit where he takes orders is done, but Crowley thinks it would be remiss to pass up on a bit of aftercare. He’s not sure how to ask for that stuff, yet - the tender, coming-back-down sort of stuff. The way Aziraphale twines fingers into his hair. The way he strokes the back of his neck, and nudges his nose into the demon’s cheek, and murmurs words of praise against his skin. The way they slide down, to lie together, bodies separate but limbs still entangled, exchanging lazy kisses and catching breaths. 

It’s good stuff. Not at all demonic, but Crowley tries not to think about that - about what he should and shouldn’t like, and what he should and shouldn’t be. It’s is nice. It’s soothing. Earthly comfort for his Earthly body. And, sure enough, as his breaths begin to even out, he finds that the tension of the last few days is gone. His red hot need is sated. He’s just... content. 

Dropping his head back, against their pillows, he heaves a guttural sigh. 

Aziraphale’s smiling at him. 

“Feeling better?”

“Infinitely....” He rubs a hand over his face, then back, through his hair. It is damp with sweat, the top forming curls. Giving it up as a bad job, he nudges his head back into the pillows, giving another little groan. 

Aziraphale watches him with his head to one side, the pulse visible in the crook of his neck. He looks completely at peace, a picture of angelic serenity for all of ten seconds. Then, a tiny frown crosses his forehead. 

“Did you remember to turn the bath off, next door?” 

“Wh-?” Crowley curls a lip. “Yes! Satan’s sake, angel, were you thinking about that the whole time?”

“No, no,” the angel rolls his eyes. “My mind just went gloriously blank there, for a second, and I remembered.” He gives Crowley’s flank a reassuring little pat which comes out just the right side of patronising. “You did wonderfully.” 

“Do I get a gold star?” He asks, sarcastically. 

“Oh, you can have-,” Aziraphale leans over and captures him under one arm, pressing kisses along his jawline. “Absolutely anything you want, you clever, beautiful boy.”

“Don't be dissgussssting… none of that!” 

He squirms away, towards the far side of the bed, but the corners of his mouth give the game away. They’re curling backwards, into a smile, and he doesn’t give much fight when Aziraphale reels him in again. Just a half-hearted hiss. And a wriggle. 

They push and pull at one another for thirty seconds - a lazy play fight that ends in a soft bite to the angel’s shoulder and the pair of them lapsing into comfortable lethargy, again, wrapped up in one another. 

The demon yawns. 

“You might just discorporate me one day, you know… Just - pfffft - gone in a puff of smoke.”

“Can you imagine?” Aziraphale grins at him, impishly. “The scandal… what would you even say, upon arrival into Hell?”

“We could call it a thwarting?”

The angel’s mouth straightens, for a moment, pretending to take it seriously. But that lasts all of three seconds before he’s grinning again, eyes twinkling. 

“I think that might be a stretch, even for us.”

“You could say you were doing it with angelic love.” 

“I _was_ doing it with angelic love,” Aziraphale gives a little wriggle. 

“Is that what you’d tell them?”

“I’d say ‘Crowley, my mortal enemy’-,”

“Your wily and cunning mortal enemy,” Crowley points out.

“My Wiley and cunning mortal enemy-,”

“And handsome, too. Don’t forget that bit.”

A pillow hits him over the side of the head and then an angel is crowding over him, leaning down into him, forehead pressed into his chin. 

“Actually, I think I’ll just let you be discorporated and leave it at that.”

“What? You wouldn’t come riding into Hell to save me?” Crowley pulls on a dramatic voice, giving a little writhing motion along with it. Something serpentine and silly. “Brandishing your flaming sword?”

“I’d come riding into Hell to save you,” Aziraphale murmurs, his voice suddenly not teasing, but something liquid warm and soft, against Crowley’s neck. “The sword might take some finding, though.”

“Yeah, because you gave it away…” 

And somehow, six thousand years later, that moment strikes him a little deeper, for Crowley. 

He turns his head, watching his friend. 

Aziraphale really had just given it away. He’d been granted the honour of guardianship, over that gate. He’d been gifted a sword that could defeat any opponent - that could have given him unimaginable power against his brethren and allowed him to rule, like a heathen god, over all of humankind - but he had given it away. To keep a human warm and safe. He’d not asked for permission. Not thought about the repercussions, for himself. He’d just done it.

“You’re an idiot,” Crowley murmurs, affectionately. 

“Mmmm.” The angel drops a tiny kiss against his throat. “Want to carry me to my bath?”

“Wha-,” the demon shrugs him off, the moment blown. “No. Absolutely not!”

“Is that because you can’t lift me?”

“No, I mean… you can’t be that heavy.”

“I wasn’t implying that I was. I was simply implying that you might not be strong enough to lift a well-built man-shaped creature.” 

“Piss off. I’m plenty strong enough.” 

“Prove it, then, oh mighty and powerful serpent.” 

“I-,” 

“Go on…” 

. 

He carries the angel into the bathroom. Though, it’s really less of a carry and more of a mutual, naked stagger - a loosely clasped embrace in which Aziraphale’s arms are wrapped around Crowley's shoulders, from behind, and the angel occasionally chips in with a step or two. 

It’s silly. It’s juvenile. It’s completely un-befitting representatives of Hell and Heaven. But Crowley suspects they’ve rather blown any semblance of respectability several hundred times over, by now. Probably every time the angel falls apart around or inside of him - every time Crowley whispers against Aziraphale that he’s the most important thing in his world. 

They’re both incoherent, by the time they reach the edge of the bath, giggling away like teenagers. Then, they sober up a bit, as they attend to the quiet minutiae of the process. The checking of the water’s temperature. The scooping a few handfuls of bubbles off the top so they won’t overflow. 

Bath sorted, Aziraphale steps in and Crowley flops down to sit on the floor beside the tub, arm trailing in the water, fingertips brushing bubbles, and ripples, and occasionally the edge of an angelic knee.

“How is it, at the hospital?” Aziraphale asks, after they’ve sat in comfortable silence for about three minutes, listening the the little radio garble on. 

Crowley looks up, feeling a rush of unease.

“How did-… Did Adam say something?” 

_Or did you follow me, one evening, as I left the bookshop? Did you trail me, curious as to what evil I was out perpetrating, only to find me pushing air into frail human bodies - replacing fluid, and balancing urine output, and trying to find a drug that works… as useless at being a human as I once was at being a demon._

“Adam didn’t have to say anything, love.” Aziraphale rests his head against the back of the tub. “You like your sleep too much to be out, working twelve-hour shifts, for anyone else. So, I figured you must be at the hospital… Or, at a hospital, anyways. Is it the same one Adam trained at?”

The demon shakes his head. 

The tight ball of unease which had formed inside him is unknotting, slowly. This isn't going to be a confrontation, he realises. The angel isn’t going to force the conversation. Isn't going to ask why. Or demand Crowley to fit his actions into some category. He’s keeping the tone easy, neutral. His expression is relaxed. 

Crowley lets out a slow breath. Now that the surprise of it is over, he is relieved that Aziraphale already knows. He never actively lied about it, but he had been avoiding talking about what he’d been slinking off to do, and now the angel knows what’s going on without the awkward bit of him having to admit to it. 

“It’s, uh…” he gives a little shrug. “A place up just north of the city. Adam started there, last year. They’ve not been doing to well. They were understaffed before all of this, and failing to pass inspection, so the kid thought they could use some extra hands, to get them through. And… yeah...”

Aziraphale watches him, carefully weighing up the mood in the room. 

“How bad is it?” He asks, cautiously. 

Crowley looks down, at the surface of the water, at the bubbles and the way they catch the light from the window. Surface tension. Was that one of his, he wonders? No, that was Micheal. Probably around the same time that Lucifer and he had done fluid dynamics. 

Crowley can remember the three of them very vividly, all of a sudden - buggering around with the laws of physics as if they knew what they were doing. Thinking they knew everything there was to know. So proud of themselves. So naive. It was such a long, long time ago… 

“It is pretty awful, to be fair,” he mutters, at the bubbles. 

Aziraphale doesn’t comment. Doesn’t lift a hand to touch him, in pity. Doesn’t try and lessen the weight of the admission with a response. 

“Adam’s doing alright, considering,” Crowley murmurs. It’s easier to talk about his sort-of son, than about himself. “Think the strain of it is starting to hit, after a few weeks. He’s tired. And pushing himself too hard. But he's coping. And this week and next are due to be the worst.”

“Yes, i’ve heard that, too.”

Crowley looks up and they watch one another a long few seconds. He’s still leaning against the cool porcelain of the bathtub. The rim of it is cutting in, under his armpit, making the tips of his fingers a bit tingly, but he doesn’t move. The water is warm and his fingertips get to graze against Aziraphale, each time they finish a revolution, below the surface.

“What about you?” Aziraphale asks, eventually. “How are you coping?”

“Meh.” The noise comes out too fast, too dismissive. Crowley swallows, takes a breath, and tries again. “M’not sure if I’m actually helping, to be honest. I mean I know I’m _helping_ \- someone has to do what I’m doing - but there’s just so much of it, angel. We solve one problem and five more of the same crop up. It's constant and draining. And I know I could technically do more. Even if I can't, really… I dunno.”

_I feel_ , he tells himself. Just say the words ‘I feel’ and work from there. 

“I guess, I feel... impotent, in all of it."

Aziraphale nods, slightly. 

“Yes. It’s incredibly hard, not being able to do more.” Another long pause. The radio switches smoothly over to a gently lilting number. Something unfamiliar. “We can talk about it, if you like?” the angel asks.

“Maybe. Sometime.” Not now, though. Right now, he’s tired and still feeling a little blown open, from the sex. All he really wants to do is sit and listen to Aziraphale. “Later?"

“Okay..." the angel watches him, very fondly, for a few seconds. Then, "Want to get in, with me?” 

Crowley eyes the bathtub. 

“Don’t think I’ll fit.”

“Yes, you will.” Aziraphale throws a gentle smile. “Little demonic miracle, or two…”

“Mmmhhhh…” he gives a long, drawn out groan, then pulls himself up on his slightly numb arm. His fingers curl around the roll top. “All right, then. Go on. Shift over…”

He steps into the bath and slides down, on front of the angel, gently taking one of his friend's arms and pulling it around his shoulders. (No mention is made of this. Just a soft, angelic smile). Then, he nudges his head back until Aziraphale's chin is pushed into his temple. (No mention is made of this, either). 

It's nice. Comfortable. Soothing. The morning sunlight is still streaming in. He can see the outline of the tomatoes that he's growing, in a box on the windowsill, bright through warped glass. He can hear the song on the radio continuing to play, looping on itself because Aziraphale clearly wants to prolong the safety of the moment and the world has a habit of accommodating Aziraphale. 

Crowley can't blame it. He has developed a habit of accommodating Aziraphale, too. And who wouldn't, he thinks, smiling as the angel mumbles that they'll have to make more tea, to go along with the demon's food cake - because their old cups will have gone stone cold. Who wouldn't want to spend the rest of existence accommodating Aziraphale, in their body and their life? It sounded like a bloody marvellous way to spend an existence. 

"We'll make more tea," he yawns, pushing himself back against soft angel belly. "I'll nap, for a bit, and you can come upstairs and read, if you like?" It's a request rather than an offer, really, but Aziraphale doesn't call him on it. Just kisses the back of his head. 

"That would be nice."

"Mmh."

.

They get up to nap and read, eventually, but not after a good forty minutes of soaking. The water stays warm for the angel. He has a habit of accommodating his demon, too. 

.

**Author's Note:**

> [A post shared by caricari (@heycaricari)](https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2sevxHbew/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) on Apr 11, 2020 at 1:50pm PDT
> 
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